So whenever Bible contradicts reality, christians say "It was a metaphor". How do they know...

The gospels give different days of Jesus' death, different places of his birth, the order of events in his life, omissions of major events in his life according to gospels other than the one being read, massive differences in Christology, enormous contradictions about the details of the infant Jesus. That's only some of the contradictions from just the gospels that are just about Jesus.

>all the apostles gathered together
>still cant figure out if theyre seeing the same thing
>saints coming out of their graves and walking around
>did he fly to heaven or not
>implying any of this shit wasnt mostly made up afterwards

You're making the assumption that the gospels were intended to be an exact chronicle of history. This is not how ancient histories were recorded, especially not roman biographies which is the genre that the gospels belong to.

Modern history tends to be recorded in very precise and literal ways so it's easy to make the assumption that this was how it was always done, but in ancient times, for example, if a historian was recording a speech he may change some words around to make it flow better. This is why some gospels that are recording the same event where Jesus speaks might use different verbiage. Both are recording precisely what Jesus is asserting even though the quotes and words are different. Many people do this same thing without realizing it today, like if you were watching a long speech and somebody asked you what it was about, you would probably give a very brief but accurate summary with some quotation instead of an hour long recitation.

This is also why there may be different ordering and omission of events, because it's being tailored for specific audiences. Mark was evangelizing to the Romans, this is why Mark is the most action packed gospel, because Romans were the leaders of the world and they respected strength. So the author highlighted those aspects of Jesus that would most appeal to them. Omission isn't a contradiction.

As far as the different times of death is concerned, it's very likely that its a simple transcription error, which is what Eusebius believed.

>Mark says Christ was crucified at the third hour. John says that it was at the sixth hour that Pilate took his seat on the tribunal and tried Jesus. This discrepancy is a clerical error or an earlier copyist. Gamma signifying the third hour is very close to the episemon denoting the sixth. As Matthew, Mark and Luke agree that the darkness occurred from the sixth hour to the ninth, it is clear that Jesus, Lord and God, was crucified before the sixth hour., i.e., about the third hour, as Mark has recorded. John similarly signified that it was the third hour, but the copiest turned the gamma into the episemon

most of the time they just claim it happened anyway or the whole narrative crumbles to pieces like that post the other day about the book of exodus. i think you're getting confused by genuine parables which are pretty obvious to pick up on if you're not a brainlet

You don't think the Exodus happened?

i find it hard to believe, at least in a literal sense.

You know it's a metaphor because if it wasn't then it would be a contradiction and there aren't any contradictions in the Bible.

Well why don't you believe it happened? There's good evidence to suggest that the Jews were in Egypt at the time, which includes details that corroborate the account of Exodus.

It's definitely all true and 100% all actually happened.

A translation of a translation of a second-hand source based on multiple second-hand sources by anonymous authors certainly sounds reliable.

For someone who uses images to represent things, this comes as 'not serious enough'.

how do you personally as a human being know what is metaphor and what isn't

Your comparison to what people would say in a common conversation is quite poor because on one hand I didn't really care that much about what I watched, on the other you have chroniclers who are divinely inspired. And when chronicles are subjectively recorded, it's not that big a deal when there are multiple different viewpoints so the truth can be pieced together, but the for the majority of the bible which doesn't have those multiple viewpoints, nothing can be taken as truthful.

>divine unerring word of god
>transcription errors
Incredible

I've heard the opposite, that there's no historical evidence that the Jews were captive in Egypt. Could've actually been a metaphor, right? Because Egypt in the old testament is often used to signify a state of faithlessness and a sort of "good enough" materialism.
Anyway I want a source on the historicity of Exodus just 'cause I've had professors assert the contrary.

It's not the Koran, most Christians know that the Bible is divinely inspired, not written *by* the divine.

Ok? Not really a relevant observation, I don't understand the point of your post

My point is that Christian doctrine doesn't declare all of the Bible to be the unerring word of God the way that the Koran is for Muslims. We know how it was compiled, more or less when each book was edited, and in some cases have a good idea about who the redactor would've been (or at least their position in society.) This leaves room for human error.

Ah, I see your point now. But this room for human error combined with the fact people can pretend to be the authors of a book in the Bible to further their own agenda, kind of makes deriving anything valuable from the Bible impossibility

*an impossibility

>People can pretend to be the authors of a book in the Bible
It's your turn to clarify what you mean, now. We've had the completed Bible for almost 2000 years now. Nobody is making authorship claims. Its value is derived from the text itself, with clarification from archaeological and linguistic study giving the stories their due context.
As for the human error, point me to discrepancies that actually matter, or that have a huge impact on how the text can be interpreted.

As in someone who is not Paul could write one of the books in the Bible as Paul. And they wouldn't be divinely inspired (though I doubt anyone who wrote the Bible was divinely inspired).

Obviously I can't point to discrepancies, because human error leads to uncertainty, and the only way to be certain about where the uncertain parts are is to have multiple stories corroborating the same thing in different ways. If I could point to areas where human error has fucked up the intention then there'd be no uncertainty, so I could trust the words of the bible, but the complete inverse is true, as that is the nature of true uncertainty.

The bibles human authors were not divine stenographers. Scripture is free from error in what the ancient authors asserted, not what they wrote. For example the author of Genesis did not understand some of the scientific truths we know today (just as we don't understand scientific truths humans will come to learn in the future). But any lack of knowledge on the part of the ancient author would not constitute an error in his text because the author is not asserting a scientific description of the world, but a popular one.

Is it your opinion that an ancient account of history or biography can only be trusted if its complete or comprehensive? If so I would like to see an example of such an account that you deem trustworthy. Your treating the historical accounts in the bible as being "guilty until proven innocent" but you're not providing any justification for this hermeneutic of suspicion.

>and the only way to be certain about where the uncertain parts are is to have multiple stories corroborating the same thing in different ways

So do you believe that Jesus died and was resurrected?

What the fuck is up with moby dick?? The whales are real but the book has metaphors so they aren't real, I don't FUCKING GET IT

Egyptologists have discovered the presence of Semitic names in Egyptian records from the time of the Exodus. They have also found descriptions of forced laborers making bricks in order to meet quotas as well as failures to meet those quotas because of a lack of straw--details that can all be found in the book of Exodus.

James K Hoffmeier, The Immigration Crisis: Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009), 64.

The famed Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner, who was generally dismissive of the historicity of the Old Testament, said "that Israel was in Egypt under one form or another no historian could possibly doubt."

Cited in Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 112.

No, but I'm not aware of the multiple sources corroborating his resurrection

But what they assert is part of what they wrote, you're making an arbitrary distinction. So if there is human error of any kind the truth of the stories recorded falls into doubt.
I didn't say anything about lack of knowledge, though that might affect how they retell stories. My point was simply that if they can and do alter stories, and surely they're more likely to do so if they don't understand what they're writing, those stories simply can't be trusted.

I don't really trust historical accounts in general, but I naturally trust incomplete and non-comprehensive historical accounts of mundane, established events infinitely more than the same but for supernatural, novel events.

>No, but I'm not aware of the multiple sources corroborating his resurrection

There are multiple sources in the bible alone, or do you think the four gospels were all written by one person?

There's also the epistles and the deeds of the apostles.

>and the deeds of the apostles

I don't know why I laughed so hard at this. IT'S ACTS

None or which were even written by eyewitnesses

Well lets go one at a time. Who do you believe wrote Matthew and why do you believe this to be true? If you want I could go first in answering.

I wish I knew who wrote it, safe bet is it was a jew

I'd imagine they wrote to further their agenda, to write an everlasting literary piece, and to propagate the burgeoning cult of Christianity

I didn't ask you why it was written. You said that none of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. Okay, so how do you know this to be true if you don't know who the authors are?

Tradition holds the gospel of Matthew to be written by the apostle Matthew, who lived at the time of the crucifixion and would have allowed access to direct eyewitness testimony. Virtually all ancient manuscripts that preserve the title of the work give some form of heading "According to Matthew." There is also a consensus among Church Fathers: St. Irenaeus, Origen, St. John Chysostom, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine all affirm apostolic authorship of the Gospel of Matthew and there are no traces of a rival tradition attributing the work to somebody else.

meant for

My mistake, I wasn't really paying attention when I read your post

The authora themselves don't claim in the gospels they are eyewitness, and they write in the first person. We've already established ITT there isn't a focus on objectivity in the chronicling, so there is no reason for the pretence of objectivity that writing in the third person gives. The next likely reason for writing in the third person is not being an eyewitness

But the writer of the Gospel of Matthew didn't claim he was Matthew. It's just a later addition, and the fact that it's a common addition is irrelevant.
Yes, there are no traces if a rival attribution tradition. That's not surprising it the author is anonymous, especially because the gospels aren't pro-jew so if the author was a jew he would likely face persecution.

What do you mean by objectivity in chronicling? I hope you're not assuming that because a historian didn't include everything that ever happened we can't trust anything he wrote. That's like saying that because Tacitus didn't record certain details of the Roman economy the great fire didn't actually happen, or that we can't trust his account of the fire.

I agree that Matthew didn't claim himself to be the author within the gospel itself but so what? It doesn't follow from this lack of a signature that he isn't the author, or that we can't know who the author is.

>The next likely reason for writing in the third person is not being an eyewitness

Is it your position that historians can't give an accurate depiction of events unless they experience an event first hand?

Ideally it would be everything you see, but at the very least it's not exaggerating certain parts and not omitting certain parts.
The differences are far greater in the gospels than simply tacitus' omission of some details of the economy. In the books of John and Matthew, Jesus' approach to performing miracles are completely at odds. So, a great deal of subjectivity is implied, so a great deal of the gospels' trustworthiness is lost

The fact the author didn't claim to be Matthew in the Gospel means there is no evidence Matthew was the author. But there is evidence he wasn't the author, like the author writing of Matthew's experiences in the third person

If it's not first hand, then they're just giving an accurate depiction of what they're told to depict by someone else. And people can make stuff up and lie

There is no evidence whatsoever that the Jews were slaves, but yes, they were present in Egypt.

Can you elaborate on Jesus' miracles being at odds? I'm not sure what you're referring to. I'm also unclear of where the author of the book refers to Matthew in the third person. If you can cite a verse that would be helpful.

Tradition and consensus among the Church Fathers do count as evidence and it is a defensible position, but even if I were to give in on this and say that we don't know who the author is, how do then support your belief that the author was not an eyewitness or had no contact with eye witnesses? You're saying that we don't know who the author is but then you're making a positive claim about the author--this is a self-defeating position.

See
>They have also found descriptions of forced laborers making bricks in order to meet quotas as well as failures to meet those quotas because of a lack of straw--details that can all be found in the book of Exodus.

Yes. They're called "lists of things we want to pick and choose as they suit us" and they're different for almost every "believer."

His approach to miracles, not his miracles themselves. In one he's reported to be all about showing miracles to show his divinity, in the other he's reported to be the opposite. I don't remember him being referred to in third person alone but when Matthew's in a group, it's always "they" rather than "we"

The tradition comes way after when the gospels were actually written though, so the tradition is just that: tradition. It's people believing something with no evidence to support it, and them believing it purely because it's convenient and it convinced the masses the Bible wasn't a shitfest of anonymous authors that was significantly lacking in eyewitnesses
I already explained how the third person suggests it wasn't written by eyewitnesses. And no, that's not a self-defeating position since "eyewitness or not" and "identity of author" are two things you can know completely independently
I didn't say he had no contact with eyewitnesses. But see reply to second user in

That says The Bibble

>there are idiots in this thread who say they believe in an immensely powerful God but don't believe Genesis is literally true

If that is all you base it on, you have no conception of what it takes to prove something through archeological records.
The Hebrew Bible itself is not archaeological evidence, as usually understood. Looking at the bible as a historical document, its references to Egypt only prove that the authors had some knowledge of Egypt. It doesn't mean that any of the authors' people were there. Plus, scholars typically date the Pentateuch to centuries after the exodus.
No Egyptian records mention slaves known as Hebrews. The first Egyptian reference to Israel (in Canaan) is the Merneptah Stela. It is very ancient, though later than would be expected for the exodus, and its brief reference does not corroborate Israelite presence in Egypt or their enslavement.
If you take a neutral or skeptical approach to the bible, the external evidence is not sufficient to prove or corroborate the Biblical claims regarding Hebrew/Israelite life in Egypt.

>I don't remember him being referred to in third person alone but when Matthew's in a group, it's always "they" rather than "we"
The Bible never uses the first-person (that I know of) I don't think it was a popular convention for history books at the time.

The Bible is full of contradictions, anyone who says otherwise is in denial.

Or maybe the Bible has no eyewitnesses.

actually, looking back at it, there are a few parts with first person, but those are meant to be historical accounts. they're letters like Timothy and the dream of Revelation

>I don't remember him being referred to in third person alone but when Matthew's in a group, it's always "they" rather than "we"

In any case I don't think tells us anything useful. "they" doesn't mean that Matthew isn't a part of the group, and this very well could be an artifact of the language the book was written in, or even an artifact of the genre--as in it being a convention of the time that histories be written in the third person.

I still don't know what you're talking about with Jesus' miracles. You have to provide specific examples.

We can create a profile of the author of Matthew. He was clearly steeped in biblical and religious traiditions of Israel, which makes it probably that he was a Jewish believer of Jesus. Second, because the author demonstrates a bilingual competence in writing accurate Greek and translating quotations directly from the Hebrew OT, it is probable that he was a native to Palestine or educated there, because Greek was widely known there, and hardly known outside of Israel. Third, the gospel features multiple references to currency, debts, business transactions, and other financial matters. Taken together, these three aspects of the gospel suggest that the author was Jewish, that he knew Hebrew and Greek, that he was probably from Palestine, and that he had some interest in the episodes and teachings of Jesus involving money.

This makes Matthew the tax collector and apostle a suitable candidate and it coincides with the external evidence of Christian tradition which I believe is being unjustifiably dismissed by you.

third-person is for clarity's sake, originally the books of the bible were read aloud in public readings, people were illiterate and copies had to be made by hand, so not everyone could read it themselves
what happens if you're a passerby who wants to listen in for a while after it had already began? if the work was in first person, some of the audience would get confused, so instead of "I did X" it's "Joshua did X", for the sake of clarity

Nice gish gallop. You're assuming that this is the only archaeological evidence to support the existence of Jews in Egypt at the time when I never claimed that this was the case. I merely provided one piece of extra-biblical evidence that indicates the presence of Jews in Egypt working as forced laborers. I also never claimed that the bible is archaeological evidence.

I agree that the most likely assembled or written centuries after the fact but so what? The Jews of the time of the exodus had an oral tradition and didn't write anything down. It doesn't follow that because something isn't immediately written down it's not true.

The Bible is allowed to be the sole witness to history. People who reject the bible because it was the only witness to something have been proven wrong before. Prior to the late 19th century, the bible was the only source that attested to the existence of the Hittites. Since no other works or artifacts corroborated their existence, modern critics said this was yet another example of the bible getting ancient history wrong. But in 1880, Henry Sayce delivered a lecture demonstrating that hieroglyphics found in Turkey and Syria showed that the Hittites had actually existed. Just as they did with the Hittites, modern scholars also doubted Belshazzar's existence because it was only recorded in the bible, but that too was disproven. You're assuming that unless a historical event described in the bible is also described in a nonbiblical work, then the event either never happened or we have no way of knowing if it did happen, what is your justification for this?

*aren't meant

wtf LOTR is just an allegory for WW2 it's not like orcs actually existed.

Sauron is real tho. He created the universe.

Christians are Materialists. Materialists are Christians. Persons are ghosts. Phenomena are silly putty.

Gnosis>Faith.

>Since no other works or artifacts corroborated their existence, modern critics said this was yet another example of the bible getting ancient history wrong
>Thereafter proceeds to give an example where there was evidence added to the case for the existance of the Hitties

You're not very bright, are you?

I'm not sure you understood what you read. At one point there was no extrabibilical evidence of the existence of the Hittites, and skeptics used this as an example of the bible getting history wrong. Those skeptics were proven wrong when extrabiblical evidence was eventually uncovered. The point is that we're not justified in doubting a historical episode took place just because the bible is the sole witness to it.

...

And it is a very proper position to be in, as I told you in my original post, to be either neutral or skeptical if the sole proof is the bible.
>were proven wrong when extrabiblical evidence was eventually uncovered
That is exactly the point I was making, and you are very much justified in every way shape and form to doubt and be critical of a given "fact" when that fact is only present in the bible. To draw on one example, is not enough.

I suppose the flood is also a fact that is "not uncovered yet" or a metaphor. I suppose The plagues aren't "uncovered" as fact yet either, or is a metaphor. I suppose the resurrection of a multitude of saints were also metaphor, or haven't been uncovered yet. Etc. You cannot lose this game if you take the position you are in as of now.

You're conflating neutrality with skepticism, they're not the same thing. Neutrality in regards to scripture is what I'm calling for which is why it's not justified to doubt an event just because the bible is the sole witness. The bible counts as evidence and it should be treated that way, meaning you need reasons to refute an episode recorded in it. It's not enough to simply say the bible is the only record.

As far as the flood goes, geologists have discovered that melting glaciers near the black sea could have caused the collapse of giant ice dams about seven thousand years ago. This isn't to say that the flood narrative isn't a sort of "epic narration," but it does absolutely have a historical and geological basis to believe it actually happened.

We shouldn't assume the author of Genesis was asserting that a worldwide flood took place. Modern readers may interpret passages in Genesis that describe water covering "the earth" as meaning the entire planet was inundated. But a resident of ancient Mesopotamia may have only understood "the earth" to mean "the land" or the region he knew. In fact, the Hebrew word for "earth" in this passage, eretz, can also mean "land," as in Genesis 41:57, where it says that "all the eretz came to Egypt to buy grain" when a famine struck the region. Of course, this doesn't mean that everyone on the planet went to Egypt to buy grain, just those people who inhabited the region the author was referring to went there.

Similar accounts of a massive flood in the Ancient Near East serve to corroborate the Genesis account. The Author of Genesis may also have used popular storytelling devices found in other flood narratives in order to show how the God of the Israelites was superior to pagan deities. For example, in the Epic of Gilgamesh the gods are afraid of the flood and flee to higher ground, but in Genesis God is in complete control of the disaster and is unaffected by it.

The Epic of Gilgamesh also seems to have been derived from an even older story called the Epic of Atrahasis. In this story, a pantheon of gods flood the earth because human beings had become too huberous and noisy. The author of the Genesis account may even have been purposefully subverting this anti-life attitude in his own narrative in which God commands that Adam and Eve "be fruitful and multiple." God's decision to send the flood in judgment of sin instead of as a population control measure would be a further subversion of this theme.

>As far as the flood goes, geologists have discovered that melting glaciers near the black sea could have caused the collapse of giant ice dams about seven thousand years ago. This isn't to say that the flood narrative isn't a sort of "epic narration," but it does absolutely have a historical and geological basis to believe it actually happened.
lmfao nevermind dude, you're just trolling at this point

Read the next paragraph before you go. I'm not claiming that the entire earth was inundated with water.

>you cannot lose this game if you take the position you are in as of now.

And at last the fedora reveals his true power. The fact that you look at this as a 'game' to 'win' is exactly why you are derided on the internet as pseuds who are only interested in winning internet arguments. If you can't into allegory, symbolism, literary criticism. et al you're on the wrong board.

As the other user has said, the Bible is a collection of books, not a singular book. Certain books are meant to be allegorical, some mythological, some poetic, and some books are books of straight jurisprudence. If you don't understand the difference between these literary forms you're never going to understand the purpose, beauty, or intent of the Bible.

You're attempting to discredit the merits of the Bible on the basis that it isn't 'true', but the Church has never hid the fact that much of the Bible is allegorical and poetic. In fact, the early Church fathers saw no problem in this and even wrote a great many works on the subject as this user has pointed out.

Ecclisastes is a philosophical tract. Proverbs is a book of, well, proverbs. Psalms is a book of songs. I could go on and on but you get my point.

If you're having trouble understanding this concept, look into Tolkien's understanding of a 'santifying myth' and how he applies it to Christianity.

Good post. Answers the OP perfectly well and has no replies. Typical.

This is an extremely well written answer. Keep it up, lad.

Excellent reply, m8. Love the proper sources and justification of your statements.

Great replies, anons. Loving the compliments. Keep up the niceties.

shrek fedora.jpeg

>So whenever Bible contradicts reality

It doesn't. If you think it does, you simply were not paying close enough attention.

As regards the resurrection we have something better. We have sources showing Jewish elders at the time spreading the word that Jesus WASN'T resurrected, and that his body was stolen from the tomb by the apostles. The reason this is better is because it confirms Jesus execution, and his burial in tomb, which would never be afforded to a person of his station at that time. So in trying to contradict the resurrection, Jewish authorities antagonistic to the story of Jesus confirm the only things which are not corroborated by multiple sources. Keep in mind that the testaments themselves are not at all like the books of today. While we recognize authorship to John, Luke, Matthew, and Thomas, you must understand that this is not in any sense of authorship we recognize today. It was only later ecumenical councils that codified the texts into uniform documents. Prior to that they existed as memorized oral tradition of the words spoken by the four named individuals. The nature of this codifying process is what makes these four gospels particularly important. Oral tradition can often run afoul of the same problems as a game of telephone. But if you have enough people from many places all saying the same things credited to the same person, you can be very confident that what's repeated is an accurate representation of what was said. So then when you have four varied but agreeing accounts of events all passed down in this same manner, with little ability to coordinate, you actually have a very strong case for authenticity. This means we have multiple sources, including antagonistic sources, confirming the execution of Jesus, his burial in a vault with stone entrance, and the setting of guards to prevent any followers of Jesus from stealing his body as the Jewish authorities would obviously fear, and later claim happened, despite their setting of guards. If you consider this too far fetched, then you must consider the alternative even less believable--that Jesus did die, was buried, and his disciples stole the body, still believing him to be the messiah, and then lost the body. Unless the evangelists spread the word of Jesus knowing and believing it to be a lie, the alternative could not have happened. When you consider the nature of communication at that time, and the distances over which these stories were communicated, the idea of conspiracy becomes the most absurd possible option. While, of course, there is no explicit empirical evidence of the resurrection, there's even less evidence for all the other possible alternatives which are all more complex solutions given the few things which are confirmed. Since these alternatives are more complex and have less evidence, it is less rational to believe them than to believe in the resurrection.

Good God throw in some line breaks every now and again. Every three or four sentences is a good rule of thumb.

G
o

B
a
c
k

T
o

R
e
d
d
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/thread

Name one

Is this satire?

>reddit spacing

No they're called paragraphs.

you have to go back.

because i don't believe the sea split in half, also i don't think the jews were slaves in egypt

You don't have to believe that the sea split in order for the exodus to have happened. Why don't you believe the Jews were slaves in Egypt? This guy post some pretty compelling evidence that they were.

that's just saying that there were jews in egypt
>You don't have to believe that the sea split in order for the exodus to have happened
so you just dismiss the parts that don't make sense? supposing they were slaves, how did they escape the egyptians then?

No I believe the sea was actually split, the point I'm making is that it's not necessary to believe that for the exodus to have actually happened. An argument could be made that the narrative is mythologized to include those miracles. Other ancient histories like those from Josephys, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Herodotus also record miracles and these writers represent our only knowledge of many historical episodes.so it wouldn't be that crazy,

So you believe that the Jews were in Egypt at the time of the Exodus but they weren't slaves. Why? What reason do you have to deny it?

>An argument could be made that the narrative is mythologized to include those miracles.
thats retarded. if you take out say, the burning bush, the whole story makes no sense

Explain why it wouldn't make any sense. Does every tribal leader need divine inspiration to do great things?

the only reason moses went back is because god tells him to and why would he go back to the same mountain to receive the ten commandments if god never told him to come back to Mt Sinai in the first place? essentially you would be saying that moses was never a prophet

What's so irritating about your arguments is that they were already answered thousands of years ago. The earliest discourses of religion are over which things should be understood in what context to mean what. You could literally read any theologian and have answers to your questions. Do you think that the Ancient Greeks LITERALLY believed Zeus was a man flying around the sky who held thunderbolts in his hand and turned into animals to rape women? When you look at primitive art, do you believe that indigenous people really believe abstract shapes to hold literal spiritual significance and that they hold absolutely zero allegorical or representational meaning? Are you surprised to discover that the Venus of Willendorf is not based on any actual person? Why do you assume that the increasing complexity of language means we have more clarity now, rather than more confusion? Why do you assume that the thoughts you grapple with in your life were never thought by ancient peoples? Why do you assume you are smarter than the minds that have shaped history when you don't even bother to try and understand what they said? Do you think life is harder now, or easier? If it is easier, how did it become so? If it was harder then, why would people more gullible, instead of less? Sure, you know things about the material world that they did not, but you did not think any of it on your own--it was all handed to you. You are not a free thinker, but a lazy one. You think you are rational, but you don't even have the slightest glimpse of logic. Honestly ask yourself this--how did a religion of non-aggression and mercy rise from the most ignorant and oppressed people to take over the world if its metaphysics and ethics was not true? How could such an ignorant and oppressed people develop such a profound ethic and metaphysics by chance?

If you take the bush as allegorical, why can't you take the mountain also as allegorical? Or, if only the bush is allegorical, why shouldn't Moses return to a place where he previously received revelation out of a very natural human instinct for ritual and pattern recognition? And how do the physical movements of Moses change the wisdom of his teachings and the power of his leadership, which are the characteristics that identify him as prophet? The demands you make are completely nonsensical. It's like you're demanding that chocolate milk come from brown cows, or else it isn't milk.

Continuing from , did you know many of the things attributed to Moses are not actually intended to be an account of what he actually said, but rather use his name to mean that the words that follow are an extension of the law as passed down by him, and that by either logic or insight they must be taken as an emanation of his divine inspiration, and not that of scribe?

If I was a secular historian who believed the exodus happened, I would be saying that Moses was not a prophet who was actually communing with God. You lack an imagination if you can't think of any reason why a chief priest might put on a show for his followers. This is all beside the point because these are details that are not necessary for there to have been an exodus of Jews from Egypt. There doesn't even have to be a historical Moses for this to be true.

I'm getting very bored with you because I've have asked you good questions about what you believe and why and you refused to answer. You're not providing any reasons for believing the Jews weren't slaves in Egypt or that the exodus didn't happen. I don't think you realize that many secular historians actually believe it happened in some form.

Not true. The resurrection of Christ contradicts reality, because it's impossible, yet it is not considered metaphorical.